8 ms·

A cult of extreme physical endurance among executives

113 points by cryoshon 11y ago

cryoshon 11y ago
I really have to wonder: at what point do these people reach such a critical mass of attempting to signal high social value and rarity that they vocally renounce being human all together and effervesce into a kale scented cloud of mist? The cargo cult of success is especially insidious for leaders, who tend to be extra impressionable; running a marathon is not a measurement of success in unrelated fields.
forgottenacc56 11y ago
'Cargo' cult? Why not just 'cult'? Why cargo?
- Shog9 11y ago
  Because hauling cargo requires more physical endurance... The term implies mimicking behaviors in vain hope of achieving the same results as those being mimicked. In this case, that'd be less sleep more multitasking more conspicuous effort.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  Using the term "cargo cult" when only cult would suffice is a type of cargo cult on itself
  - forgottenacc56 11y ago
    More words makes a stronger point.
- nl 11y ago
  Cargo cults are behaviors that arise from observing something and then misunderstanding it being caused by a specific thing you control. They first came into prominence during WW2, when native tribes would observe food and other goods literally dropping from the sky for no apparent reason. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wo...
  - forgottenacc56 11y ago
    I know what a cargo cult is but use of the term would only be appropriate if that is the core premise of the article.
  - api 11y ago
    I've thought for a long time that a huge amount of business advice is cargo cultism, since the actual underlying determinants of success are so complex and hard to pick apart. Anything far beyond the basics of value, product market fit, making something that costs less than you can sell it for, etc. is a bit suspect, especially if it starts to wax hyperbolic about ephemeral character traits and other wooey things.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- wging 11y ago
  I believe the usage of the term among science/technology folks has a lot to do with Feynman's use of the term: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
  - pen2l 11y ago
    Thank you for bringing that up. I realized the other day I don't know what "cargo cult" means despite having looked it up many times. It's one of those words.
- adiabatty 11y ago
  If it were just "cult" I'd wonder where the meetings are being held, what the initiation rites are, and if there are cool-looking robes worn at them.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    Cult does not necessarily means you need to associate with people in the same place. "cult movies" are not "cult" because people get together to talk about them or something. Cult has several meanings.
- Terr_ 11y ago
  The CEOs are following a "cargo cult" if they falsely come to believe "X means that Y will happen" without understanding the deeper system. Anyone following those CEOs would probably be in a cult, though :P
pen2l 11y ago
This trend is likely to intensify: surveys of American university students suggest that one in six now use mind-boosting drugs to get through their exams, a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers. Woah. One in six use these drugs?
- wicker 11y ago
  I'm curious if they're including caffeine in that number.
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Probably not. That would be absurdly low. The only people I know who purposely abstain from it are the (rather few) hyperreligious students or those with things like bipolar disorder. In my experience (at a pretty intense school), 1 in 6 wouldn't be surprising if they mean "at least once this semester" or something similar.
- Aqwis 11y ago
  I find it most interesting that it's apparently no problem to find doctors willing to prescribe ADD medicines to healthy university students. (I can't imagine black-market Adderall being affordable for students.) Is there no sort of oversight here at all?
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Black market Adderall is totally affordable, considering the potential cost of not having it. A single class can easily cost over a thousand dollars in per-credit tuition, never mind the compounding losses from being behind schedule to finish your curriculum. $5 for the last 8 hour burst of productivity needed to avoid that? Any sane person would make that trade, especially if it's taken rarely enough that it won't damage your brain too much. Honestly the kids who do have scripts are more concerning than the ones who take it once or twice a semester.
  - liquidise 11y ago
    Engineers tend to over-engineer. Law makers tend to make too many laws. Medical professionals tend to over-medicate. There is data aplenty that suggests an over abundance of psychological diagnosis, and we can infer medicating for these potentially bad diagnosis.
la6470 11y ago
Yeah keep doing your exercises and early morning sex while the thousands of new generation workers slave their ways in their cube less stations for the glory of agile and devops and being different.
Animats 11y ago
They're trying to emulate Putin, perhaps.
erentz 11y ago
I wonder if these superhero CEOs would be willing to be scientifically tracked for a few months to see how well they really perform. Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way. The slightly more honest ones might be conflating a weeks of effort to a single day. This is the kind of "white lie" I could almost see myself doing (but not to this extreme). So perhaps one day this week they got up at 4:30. Or perhaps twice this week they did a navy seal workout. But in their reporting this is all a "normal day". Or, since appearence is everything these days maybe they are just saying what they think they need to say. Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable. Imagine the CEO that was honest and said "I get up at 9:00am and relax with coffee and a newspaper while I get ready for the day." People would deride them. So like all people who make it to the top they play the part, and lie.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way. Probably a lie. The article mentions "pre-dawn sex" as a way of connecting with their spouse, but a lot of these high performers are either divorced or single. Elon Musk is a good example. This isn't a value judgment, by the way. It's just that the types of high performers described in the article rarely have time for family.
- janekm 11y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if it were mostly due to journalists exaggerating these stories, I'm always amazed by what gets written after I talk to a journalist ;) It would make sense that a "day in the life" story would be assembled from activities actually occurring over the span of a week.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  > Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable. This is truly sagacious statement. Modern CEOs represent almost none of the value generation for the companies described except for the part where things are sold or money is solicited. Perhaps that is a cruel and thoughtless quantification of corporate leadership, but I've worked for some truly bad and even gross leaders. People who offered me hard drugs for performance. People who revealed company secrets to sound good in interviews. People who proudly posted about their underage sex tourism on facebook. Bad people. So I don't put much stock in it. So, I suspect that this is a compensation for the other fact: CEOs are hiring and then selling that team. CEOs claim to recruit, lead and inspire their talent. They're all too aware of what's actually critical to the functioning of a company. They're all too aware of who they can't lose. So maybe they're actually doing this for themselves? To say, "See? Maybe I am not as smart or creative or talented in a way that directly benefits our business, but I work as hard as everyone else put together because I care more." But all the same I should start trying to wake up early to exercise. It's not like there is any other time I could do it. ;)
orthoganol 11y ago
I think self-challenge is a great thing, but I never understood CEOs whose understanding of self challenge is basically confined to the physical realm - training like Navy Seals, motorcycling, climbing difficult mountains, doing an ultra marathon, etc... You can challenge yourself on a lot of levels, but it always feels a little brute when it's only physical stuff. Of course to truly broaden yourself, to grow in the deepest, meaningful ways, you won't have time to do it if you're a CEO.
thewarrior 11y ago
SAP India CEO who used to be proud of doing only 4-5 hours of sleep a night , and was an avid marathon runner died of cardiac arrest at 42. http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed-ranjan-das-and-lessons-for-corporate-india/ http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed-ranjan-d...
- lwhalen 11y ago
  Eat right, exercise, Live Healthy(tm)... die anyway.
  - erikb 11y ago
    Just "doing healthy things" does not mean you are healthy. If you run too much it's as bad for you as running too little (and now you also have put effort into it, which in my eyes makes it worse). And sleeping 5 hours or less is not healthy either. I think that's what the comment you replied to tried to say.
  - lagadu 11y ago
    Without enough sleep he definitely wasn't living healthily. Plus the amount of sleep you get is what effectively regulates how effective your workouts are.[1] By sleeping that little they're just wasting a large portion of their time working out. Ask any specialized doctor or even personal trainer: they'll tell you to sleep your heart out if you want to get results. [1] http://time.com/3914773/exercise-sleep-fitness/ http://time.com/3914773/exercise-sleep-fitness/
bitwize 11y ago
"I cycle to work every day, 70 miles! Both here and here are as red as a FIRE ENGINE."
thewarrior 11y ago
Reposting a comment from the article : At the core of these habits are important avenues for self fulfillment: exercise, healthy relationships, and non-work pursuits. We should certainly aspire to include some of them in our lives. The issue for me isn't how exaggerated or true these claims are, but how they are being used by C-suite executives to justify their pay scale, power, and prestige. The goal of these image obsessed executives is to build a myth of superiority both inside and outside of their organization that they are fundamentally different and better (and willing to sacrifice more) than the lowly ones who don't make it to the top. Further reinforcing this is the difficulty us mere mortals have in achieving a good paying job, financial solvency, healthy lifestyles, and strong relationships, but these people do it breathlessly easily. What choice do us mere mortals have but emulate these super-people with ever increasing amounts of our time in working to keep up? Is it that much different than the Pharaohs and Emperors who fed the myths of their own super human or divine heritage to justify their privilege and power? The truth is that these CEO's retain an ever larger piece of the organization's surplus to spend on nannies, maids, and every other service imaginable while we in the middle class must work longer and longer hours to retain our salaried positions, leaving little if any time left to pursue a balanced and healthy lifestyle. When will we realize these CEO's don't deserve these sky high salaries, CEO's need us for these organizations to function, and force them to return some of the surplus to their employees? They have no monopoly on aspirations or working hard to achieve them. http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172 http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172
- olefoo 11y ago
  The way to achieve this is to develop new forms of economic contract that allow independent collaborators to capture the economic benefits of their intellectual labor. That and automate the CEO role in the company as much as possible. The models for such organizations exist. We have the tools to build them. Why don't we see more of them around these days?
  - digaozao 11y ago
    Can you show what model are you talking about? I am curious
ExxKA 11y ago
Paywalled
- executesorder66 11y ago
  Delete browser cookies, and try again.
edanm 11y ago
This is a terrible article, and I have to say that I'm not enjoying the reaction here either. Take out the alarmist language, the "SuperBoss" title and the fact that this article talks about CEOs, and what this article is saying is that some people get up early and exercise. Is that so horrible and unhealthy? Exercising in the morning sounds like a good thing, even something most doctors would recommend! But the article phrases everything to sound so ominous: - CEOs don't get up early to exercise, they get up early to "exercise furiously". Every day that the gym I see dozens of people with me, are they all exercising "furiously"? - They mention a CEO who, while exercising, "looks at e-mail, surfs the web, watches tv" [paraphrase, not direct quote]. No kidding, everyone does that! There's music playing in the gym, there are TVs in the gym, and who the hell doesn't glance at their phones to check emails once in a while? This literally describes the behavior of 90% of the people at the gym. - The article keeps harping about the time CEOs get up, but they never even mention when they go to sleep. What if all these crazy CEOs that get up at 5am, also go to sleep at 10pm? Changes the picture somewhat, no? You'd expect a decent article to at least mention this. Seriously, most of the behaviors in the article describe me and half the people I know who try to live a healthy lifestyle by exercising in the morning, and all these prescriptions at the end of the article of how business will fail if the CEOs are always exhausted are just flat out ridiculous. Getting up early to exercise gives me and most people an energy boost, and we're definitely healthier for it.
- woah 11y ago
  This is a terrible comment. You've completely missed the point of the article, and chosen to dwell on one detail, turning it into a straw man.
  - tangled_zans 11y ago
    This is a terrible reply to the above comment! Your analysis was shallow, lacked any detailed references, and did not engage with the overall gestalt that OP tried to bring across!
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
bbcbasic 11y ago
Is it a cargo cult? Or maybe it is keeping up with the Jones? I wonder though how it compares CEO job vs. business owner CEO. With owning the company I imagine there is less politics and therefore less pressure to appear superhuman and more pressure to achieve genuinely good outcomes for the business.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
teddyknox 11y ago
I don't doubt that exercise promotes a healthy brain, but I sometimes wonder whether the endorphin high of exercise is really the best preparation for the day at hand. Sure, you feel great, but are you thinking great? Or do you just think you're thinking great? In some of the cases described in this article, it sounds like these execs are addicted to the exercise that they wake up so early for (granted not a bad habit). But addiction by its nature tends to invent a narrative for its existence and the promise of greater productivity is gold.
radicalbyte 11y ago
This sounds like the schedule that I follow. Wake, shower, exercise vigorously for 30mins whilst listening to podcasts / checking mail, then start working. At the end of the day I exercise vigorously for 90 minutes then eat and put my kids to bed. In 2 weeks time I'll be doing this whilst sleeping 2-6 hours a night. Of course most of my exercise is cycling to work, with three-five visits to the gym during the week. Baby :)
beambot 11y ago
None of that sounds abnormal; it sounds like the discipline you'd expect from extremely busy and motivated people. I always used to marvel at ex-military personnel that had this level of discipline. They accomplished more than most, all before everyone else arrived in the office. BTW: The extreme sports isn't anything new either. For example, Robert Noyce was an avid hang glider.
zipwitch 11y ago
The modern idea of CEOs is basically a cult. There is a inverse correlation between CEO pay and corporate performance http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085
kzhahou 11y ago
I call self-reporting bullshit. Err... no, what I meant to say is that I (super successful CEO) also enjoy a 5-mile run before 6am. I've answered all my underlings emails before they've hit the snooze bar. I cook my children a nutritious breakfast before my VPs have taken off their slouchy pajamas. By the time I roll into the office at 7:30 sharp, the entire company --as well as adjacent buildings-- tremble beneath my superior stamina and efficiency.
erikb 11y ago
I wonder if it is really such a new thing. Elite schools pushing students to learn 14h a day and indirectly to also use drugs to increase performance, that sounds like a typical elite youth story.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  I would say the pushing of students to take performance enhancing drugs is a direct consequence of emphasizing competition rather than learning. Having met many of these people, it's not that they are incomplete or flawed human beings-- it's that they are largely foreign to themselves because their only mode is to "achieve" resume items, even if they flatly deny that is their life's purpose when questioned. The biggest strengths that "elite" over-achievers typically have are a complete lack of existential pause and a rejection of non-practical introspection.
sgt101 11y ago
Very interesting in the light of this paper http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont... (with registration, read for no payment) One of the key organisational stories is "Is the Big Boss Human" part of the "inequality/equality" duality identified by the authors. Sooooo... what message are Bosses sending to everyone?
e15ctr0n 11y ago
> according to one CEO, several of his peers are now dabbling in mind-boosting drugs such as Modafinil and Ritalin ... a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers. Even painkillers are being abused by executives. Julie Hamp, Toyota's global communications chief, was arrested in Japan and forced to resign after authorities discovered oxycodone pills in a package she shipped to herself. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top-toyota-executive-resigns/29551369/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top-toyo... From this article: > Oxycodone is a widely prescribed painkiller in the United States. But possession is illegal in Japan without a prescription and special permission is required to bring it into the country.
golemotron 11y ago
What is happening here is an extension of what social media is doing to us. To compete with each other for attention, executives have to find new ways to do social signaling.
narrator 11y ago
I was in Mendoza, Argentina a while back and met some guys who worked with these high rollers who were climbing the seven summits. They were of course climbing Acongagua in Argentina, one of the easier summits, from a technical perspective. Apparently, they were going to spend $25,000 PER PERSON to fly into a staging area near Vincent Mastiff, the highest mountain in Antarctica. It's so expensive because you've got to find some guy crazy enough to land a big plane on ice in the middle of nowhere Antarctica. There is no town there, nobody, nothing, for 100s of miles, completely desolate and uninhabited, yet these guys want to go there. I still don't get why they do that crap.

113 points by cryoshon 11y ago

I really have to wonder: at what point do these people reach such a critical mass of attempting to signal high social value and rarity that they vocally renounce being human all together and effervesce into a kale scented cloud of mist? The cargo cult of success is especially insidious for leaders, who tend to be extra impressionable; running a marathon is not a measurement of success in unrelated fields.

forgottenacc56 11y ago

'Cargo' cult? Why not just 'cult'? Why cargo?

Shog9 11y ago
Because hauling cargo requires more physical endurance... The term implies mimicking behaviors in vain hope of achieving the same results as those being mimicked. In this case, that'd be less sleep more multitasking more conspicuous effort.
raverbashing 11y ago
Using the term "cargo cult" when only cult would suffice is a type of cargo cult on itself
- forgottenacc56 11y ago
  More words makes a stronger point.
nl 11y ago
Cargo cults are behaviors that arise from observing something and then misunderstanding it being caused by a specific thing you control. They first came into prominence during WW2, when native tribes would observe food and other goods literally dropping from the sky for no apparent reason. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult#Pacific_cults_of_Wo...
- forgottenacc56 11y ago
  I know what a cargo cult is but use of the term would only be appropriate if that is the core premise of the article.
- api 11y ago
  I've thought for a long time that a huge amount of business advice is cargo cultism, since the actual underlying determinants of success are so complex and hard to pick apart. Anything far beyond the basics of value, product market fit, making something that costs less than you can sell it for, etc. is a bit suspect, especially if it starts to wax hyperbolic about ephemeral character traits and other wooey things.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wging 11y ago
I believe the usage of the term among science/technology folks has a lot to do with Feynman's use of the term: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
- pen2l 11y ago
  Thank you for bringing that up. I realized the other day I don't know what "cargo cult" means despite having looked it up many times. It's one of those words.
adiabatty 11y ago
If it were just "cult" I'd wonder where the meetings are being held, what the initiation rites are, and if there are cool-looking robes worn at them.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Cult does not necessarily means you need to associate with people in the same place. "cult movies" are not "cult" because people get together to talk about them or something. Cult has several meanings.
Terr_ 11y ago
The CEOs are following a "cargo cult" if they falsely come to believe "X means that Y will happen" without understanding the deeper system. Anyone following those CEOs would probably be in a cult, though :P

pen2l 11y ago

This trend is likely to intensify: surveys of American university students suggest that one in six now use mind-boosting drugs to get through their exams, a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers. Woah. One in six use these drugs?

wicker 11y ago
I'm curious if they're including caffeine in that number.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Probably not. That would be absurdly low. The only people I know who purposely abstain from it are the (rather few) hyperreligious students or those with things like bipolar disorder. In my experience (at a pretty intense school), 1 in 6 wouldn't be surprising if they mean "at least once this semester" or something similar.
Aqwis 11y ago
I find it most interesting that it's apparently no problem to find doctors willing to prescribe ADD medicines to healthy university students. (I can't imagine black-market Adderall being affordable for students.) Is there no sort of oversight here at all?
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Black market Adderall is totally affordable, considering the potential cost of not having it. A single class can easily cost over a thousand dollars in per-credit tuition, never mind the compounding losses from being behind schedule to finish your curriculum. $5 for the last 8 hour burst of productivity needed to avoid that? Any sane person would make that trade, especially if it's taken rarely enough that it won't damage your brain too much. Honestly the kids who do have scripts are more concerning than the ones who take it once or twice a semester.
- liquidise 11y ago
  Engineers tend to over-engineer. Law makers tend to make too many laws. Medical professionals tend to over-medicate. There is data aplenty that suggests an over abundance of psychological diagnosis, and we can infer medicating for these potentially bad diagnosis.

la6470 11y ago

Yeah keep doing your exercises and early morning sex while the thousands of new generation workers slave their ways in their cube less stations for the glory of agile and devops and being different.

Animats 11y ago

They're trying to emulate Putin, perhaps.

erentz 11y ago

I wonder if these superhero CEOs would be willing to be scientifically tracked for a few months to see how well they really perform. Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way. The slightly more honest ones might be conflating a weeks of effort to a single day. This is the kind of "white lie" I could almost see myself doing (but not to this extreme). So perhaps one day this week they got up at 4:30. Or perhaps twice this week they did a navy seal workout. But in their reporting this is all a "normal day". Or, since appearence is everything these days maybe they are just saying what they think they need to say. Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable. Imagine the CEO that was honest and said "I get up at 9:00am and relax with coffee and a newspaper while I get ready for the day." People would deride them. So like all people who make it to the top they play the part, and lie.

enraged_camel 11y ago
>>Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way. Probably a lie. The article mentions "pre-dawn sex" as a way of connecting with their spouse, but a lot of these high performers are either divorced or single. Elon Musk is a good example. This isn't a value judgment, by the way. It's just that the types of high performers described in the article rarely have time for family.
janekm 11y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it were mostly due to journalists exaggerating these stories, I'm always amazed by what gets written after I talk to a journalist ;) It would make sense that a "day in the life" story would be assembled from activities actually occurring over the span of a week.
KirinDave 11y ago
> Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable. This is truly sagacious statement. Modern CEOs represent almost none of the value generation for the companies described except for the part where things are sold or money is solicited. Perhaps that is a cruel and thoughtless quantification of corporate leadership, but I've worked for some truly bad and even gross leaders. People who offered me hard drugs for performance. People who revealed company secrets to sound good in interviews. People who proudly posted about their underage sex tourism on facebook. Bad people. So I don't put much stock in it. So, I suspect that this is a compensation for the other fact: CEOs are hiring and then selling that team. CEOs claim to recruit, lead and inspire their talent. They're all too aware of what's actually critical to the functioning of a company. They're all too aware of who they can't lose. So maybe they're actually doing this for themselves? To say, "See? Maybe I am not as smart or creative or talented in a way that directly benefits our business, but I work as hard as everyone else put together because I care more." But all the same I should start trying to wake up early to exercise. It's not like there is any other time I could do it. ;)

orthoganol 11y ago

I think self-challenge is a great thing, but I never understood CEOs whose understanding of self challenge is basically confined to the physical realm - training like Navy Seals, motorcycling, climbing difficult mountains, doing an ultra marathon, etc... You can challenge yourself on a lot of levels, but it always feels a little brute when it's only physical stuff. Of course to truly broaden yourself, to grow in the deepest, meaningful ways, you won't have time to do it if you're a CEO.

thewarrior 11y ago

SAP India CEO who used to be proud of doing only 4-5 hours of sleep a night , and was an avid marathon runner died of cardiac arrest at 42. http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed-ranjan-das-and-lessons-for-corporate-india/ http://www.transitioning.org/2009/11/20/what-killed-ranjan-d...

lwhalen 11y ago
Eat right, exercise, Live Healthy(tm)... die anyway.
- erikb 11y ago
  Just "doing healthy things" does not mean you are healthy. If you run too much it's as bad for you as running too little (and now you also have put effort into it, which in my eyes makes it worse). And sleeping 5 hours or less is not healthy either. I think that's what the comment you replied to tried to say.
- lagadu 11y ago
  Without enough sleep he definitely wasn't living healthily. Plus the amount of sleep you get is what effectively regulates how effective your workouts are.[1] By sleeping that little they're just wasting a large portion of their time working out. Ask any specialized doctor or even personal trainer: they'll tell you to sleep your heart out if you want to get results. [1] http://time.com/3914773/exercise-sleep-fitness/ http://time.com/3914773/exercise-sleep-fitness/

bitwize 11y ago

"I cycle to work every day, 70 miles! Both here and here are as red as a FIRE ENGINE."

thewarrior 11y ago

Reposting a comment from the article : At the core of these habits are important avenues for self fulfillment: exercise, healthy relationships, and non-work pursuits. We should certainly aspire to include some of them in our lives. The issue for me isn't how exaggerated or true these claims are, but how they are being used by C-suite executives to justify their pay scale, power, and prestige. The goal of these image obsessed executives is to build a myth of superiority both inside and outside of their organization that they are fundamentally different and better (and willing to sacrifice more) than the lowly ones who don't make it to the top. Further reinforcing this is the difficulty us mere mortals have in achieving a good paying job, financial solvency, healthy lifestyles, and strong relationships, but these people do it breathlessly easily. What choice do us mere mortals have but emulate these super-people with ever increasing amounts of our time in working to keep up? Is it that much different than the Pharaohs and Emperors who fed the myths of their own super human or divine heritage to justify their privilege and power? The truth is that these CEO's retain an ever larger piece of the organization's surplus to spend on nannies, maids, and every other service imaginable while we in the middle class must work longer and longer hours to retain our salaried positions, leaving little if any time left to pursue a balanced and healthy lifestyle. When will we realize these CEO's don't deserve these sky high salaries, CEO's need us for these organizations to function, and force them to return some of the surplus to their employees? They have no monopoly on aspirations or working hard to achieve them. http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172 http://www.economist.com/comment/2974172#comment-2974172

olefoo 11y ago
The way to achieve this is to develop new forms of economic contract that allow independent collaborators to capture the economic benefits of their intellectual labor. That and automate the CEO role in the company as much as possible. The models for such organizations exist. We have the tools to build them. Why don't we see more of them around these days?
- digaozao 11y ago
  Can you show what model are you talking about? I am curious

ExxKA 11y ago

Paywalled

executesorder66 11y ago
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edanm 11y ago

This is a terrible article, and I have to say that I'm not enjoying the reaction here either. Take out the alarmist language, the "SuperBoss" title and the fact that this article talks about CEOs, and what this article is saying is that some people get up early and exercise. Is that so horrible and unhealthy? Exercising in the morning sounds like a good thing, even something most doctors would recommend! But the article phrases everything to sound so ominous: - CEOs don't get up early to exercise, they get up early to "exercise furiously". Every day that the gym I see dozens of people with me, are they all exercising "furiously"? - They mention a CEO who, while exercising, "looks at e-mail, surfs the web, watches tv" [paraphrase, not direct quote]. No kidding, everyone does that! There's music playing in the gym, there are TVs in the gym, and who the hell doesn't glance at their phones to check emails once in a while? This literally describes the behavior of 90% of the people at the gym. - The article keeps harping about the time CEOs get up, but they never even mention when they go to sleep. What if all these crazy CEOs that get up at 5am, also go to sleep at 10pm? Changes the picture somewhat, no? You'd expect a decent article to at least mention this. Seriously, most of the behaviors in the article describe me and half the people I know who try to live a healthy lifestyle by exercising in the morning, and all these prescriptions at the end of the article of how business will fail if the CEOs are always exhausted are just flat out ridiculous. Getting up early to exercise gives me and most people an energy boost, and we're definitely healthier for it.

woah 11y ago
This is a terrible comment. You've completely missed the point of the article, and chosen to dwell on one detail, turning it into a straw man.
- tangled_zans 11y ago
  This is a terrible reply to the above comment! Your analysis was shallow, lacked any detailed references, and did not engage with the overall gestalt that OP tried to bring across!
  - sarciszewski 11y ago

bbcbasic 11y ago

Is it a cargo cult? Or maybe it is keeping up with the Jones? I wonder though how it compares CEO job vs. business owner CEO. With owning the company I imagine there is less politics and therefore less pressure to appear superhuman and more pressure to achieve genuinely good outcomes for the business.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

teddyknox 11y ago

I don't doubt that exercise promotes a healthy brain, but I sometimes wonder whether the endorphin high of exercise is really the best preparation for the day at hand. Sure, you feel great, but are you thinking great? Or do you just think you're thinking great? In some of the cases described in this article, it sounds like these execs are addicted to the exercise that they wake up so early for (granted not a bad habit). But addiction by its nature tends to invent a narrative for its existence and the promise of greater productivity is gold.

radicalbyte 11y ago

This sounds like the schedule that I follow. Wake, shower, exercise vigorously for 30mins whilst listening to podcasts / checking mail, then start working. At the end of the day I exercise vigorously for 90 minutes then eat and put my kids to bed. In 2 weeks time I'll be doing this whilst sleeping 2-6 hours a night. Of course most of my exercise is cycling to work, with three-five visits to the gym during the week. Baby :)

beambot 11y ago

None of that sounds abnormal; it sounds like the discipline you'd expect from extremely busy and motivated people. I always used to marvel at ex-military personnel that had this level of discipline. They accomplished more than most, all before everyone else arrived in the office. BTW: The extreme sports isn't anything new either. For example, Robert Noyce was an avid hang glider.

zipwitch 11y ago

The modern idea of CEOs is basically a cult. There is a inverse correlation between CEO pay and corporate performance http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085

kzhahou 11y ago

I call self-reporting bullshit. Err... no, what I meant to say is that I (super successful CEO) also enjoy a 5-mile run before 6am. I've answered all my underlings emails before they've hit the snooze bar. I cook my children a nutritious breakfast before my VPs have taken off their slouchy pajamas. By the time I roll into the office at 7:30 sharp, the entire company --as well as adjacent buildings-- tremble beneath my superior stamina and efficiency.

erikb 11y ago

I wonder if it is really such a new thing. Elite schools pushing students to learn 14h a day and indirectly to also use drugs to increase performance, that sounds like a typical elite youth story.

cryoshon 11y ago
I would say the pushing of students to take performance enhancing drugs is a direct consequence of emphasizing competition rather than learning. Having met many of these people, it's not that they are incomplete or flawed human beings-- it's that they are largely foreign to themselves because their only mode is to "achieve" resume items, even if they flatly deny that is their life's purpose when questioned. The biggest strengths that "elite" over-achievers typically have are a complete lack of existential pause and a rejection of non-practical introspection.

sgt101 11y ago

Very interesting in the light of this paper http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/2392251?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont... (with registration, read for no payment) One of the key organisational stories is "Is the Big Boss Human" part of the "inequality/equality" duality identified by the authors. Sooooo... what message are Bosses sending to everyone?

e15ctr0n 11y ago

> according to one CEO, several of his peers are now dabbling in mind-boosting drugs such as Modafinil and Ritalin ... a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers. Even painkillers are being abused by executives. Julie Hamp, Toyota's global communications chief, was arrested in Japan and forced to resign after authorities discovered oxycodone pills in a package she shipped to herself. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top-toyota-executive-resigns/29551369/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/01/top-toyo... From this article: > Oxycodone is a widely prescribed painkiller in the United States. But possession is illegal in Japan without a prescription and special permission is required to bring it into the country.

golemotron 11y ago

What is happening here is an extension of what social media is doing to us. To compete with each other for attention, executives have to find new ways to do social signaling.

narrator 11y ago

I was in Mendoza, Argentina a while back and met some guys who worked with these high rollers who were climbing the seven summits. They were of course climbing Acongagua in Argentina, one of the easier summits, from a technical perspective. Apparently, they were going to spend $25,000 PER PERSON to fly into a staging area near Vincent Mastiff, the highest mountain in Antarctica. It's so expensive because you've got to find some guy crazy enough to land a big plane on ice in the middle of nowhere Antarctica. There is no town there, nobody, nothing, for 100s of miles, completely desolate and uninhabited, yet these guys want to go there. I still don't get why they do that crap.